Ojas – A Passage to Effortless Living

Sadhguru speaks about ojas – a nonphysical energy which “lubricates” our passage through existence, so that “life happens effortlessly.”

Sadhguru: The three main processes which must happen to keep the physical body going are respiration, ingestion, and excretion. Even if you have no thought and no emotion, you can still go on. But respiration, ingestion, and excretion must happen to keep the physical body going. All these three things are mainly assisting in converting one form of physical matter into another. For example, agriculture means you make mud into food. Digestion means you make food into flesh and shit.

These are all different process where you are converting one form of physical existence into another. You eat a carrot; you make it into a human being. Tremendous job, isn’t it? Eating is not a simple thing. You eat a simple vegetable and transform it into a human being. If it goes by the evolutionary scale, it must take ten million years. In one afternoon, you are doing it. It is not a small phenomenon. Without understanding the significance and the miracle of what you are doing, you are going on.

If you understand and if you really experience the miracle, that you are converting simple things like water and food into a human possibility – it is a tremendous job that you are doing. So converting one form of physical existence into another is a natural process which is always happening in you. This is nature.

If you go by the laws of physical nature, then naturally, self-preservation is the main instinct and the main process. All these three things – respiration, ingestion, excretion – are also connected with self-preservation. If self-preservation is happening well, then the next immediate thing that the physical existence demands is procreation. But that is also self-preservation – preservation of the race. So, even procreation can be termed a secondary level of self-preservation. So, the physical knows only self-preservation – and that’s good. If the physical did not have any sense of self-preservation, you wouldn’t exist.

Beyond Boundaries

Now you want to cater to a higher dimension within you. There is another part of nature in you which wants to expand, which wants to become something else, which is not willing to settle for the limited. It wants to become boundless. The boundary is always of the physical. Physical means always between two boundaries, isn’t it? Nonphysical means no boundaries. So moving from the physical to the nonphysical also means moving from the bound to the boundless. To move from bound to boundless, you don’t have a vehicle. Right now all that you have is physical. So you are trying to create a vehicle for yourself which is non-physical, but can still retain a certain form. Ojas is that dimension where you generate a nonphysical energy, but still it has its own individual form. So that is used as a vehicle.

If you create sufficient ojas around you, your passage in this existence will be well lubricated. You will see life happens effortlessly for you. Wherever you go, you move smoothly. So much turmoil may be happening around you, everybody is going through turmoil, but somehow your passage is always clear. You keep going. Once you are like this, you can take violent risks in your life, you know? Recklessly, you can live. At least other people think you are reckless, but you know where you are going so there is no hassle about it. You can live in such a way that other people think you are superhuman, simply because you have well-rounded ojas hanging around you. Your passage is well lubricated in the existence.

In the Far Eastern cultures, an enlightened being is referred to as an “enso.” An enso means a circle. Why they are referring to him as a circle is, a circle is the shape of least resistance. Why are your car wheels or motorcycle wheels circular, not a rectangle or a triangle? Can you imagine how you would ride on square wheels? Why they are circular is because a circle is the shape of least resistance. Any moving part anywhere is a circle because it’s of least resistance. So if you create sufficient ojas around you, you become circular in your existence, you become circular, so that your passage is with least resistance through the existence. Ojas creates this possibility.

Editor’s Note: Extracted from the ebook “Enlightenment: What It Is,” available at amazon.

Stay tuned next week, when Sadhguru looks at what helps build & what dissipates ojas within us.